Okay, the comments on this thread are a shitshow. So far we have:

- JEWS DID 9/11

- prisoninmate loves ReiserFS

- Hillary will ban Linux

- FreeBSD >>>>>>>>>> Dumbuntu!

"The lack of evidence for this claim is evidence of a cover-up to hide the evidence of this claim, and is therefore evidence for this claim" is basically the prime argument for every conspiracy theory argument ever.

This hurt my feelings, and therefore, you are wrong.

Hahaha!

Yeah, I'm still working on it. :D Thanks for reading though!

>Maybe the aliens are in contact with NASA/Government

If so, in't it much simpler for NASA to say to these aliens (who can travel between worlds easily), "Hey, don't fly in THIS specific spot during this specific time, by the way it's optical range for a shitty webcam on a fixed, predictable path, so like, it's really really tiny and SPACE IS BIG GUYS, just seriously avoid this tiny strip and you're fine."

That's like them saying, "Hey aliens, when you're visiting Earth and wandering around totally undisguised, try to avoid the front door NASA headquarters because we are filming a press release there today."

> The aliens might just be humoring the governments they're in contact with, they have no reason to hide from us or fear us

So now they're... just trolling us?

Space is big, so obviously, this is deliberate action. If they wanted to reveal themselves they wouldn't do so via a grainy image from the ISS; they could just appear over New York City and just hover for a while. If they wanted to hide, again, they could simply not be in this one specific spot at this one specific time.

> Space is big, observers are few, and non-official observers are easily discredited if something slips through

It's possible to discredit a few people, but with collaboration it becomes harder. I can concede an occasional independent voice may be silenced, but this kind of thing requires a competence that the US government has shown with literally no other part of its administration.

> The aliens might similarly be in contact with the other space-faring governments on the planet

That assumes that essentially the Chinese (current frenemies of the US), the EU (a group of many man disparate countries with plenty of quasi-rogue-state elements present), the Russians (traditional enemies of the US and relations are quite cold right now), the Indians (who are third-world aligned but lean toward Russia) would all agree to, under no circumstances, no matter how bad it got, no matter what, including things like the total collapse of the USSR which happened not all that long ago, or during heightened tensions such as Russia playing in the Syrian sandpit, or Russia invading Georgia, or Russia carving up the Ukraine, would never ever blab about this, ever.

It's the same problem with fake moon landings. The Russians had roughly equal instruments pointing toward the moon and tracked every US launch made there, and put their best minds to work analyzing it (for military purposes). If the landing was fake, they would laud this over the corrupt capitalist pig-dogs for all eternity, but even they acknowledge the US was really there.

Oh shit, I'm a fuckwit?

Oh god.

I... I never knew.

Interesting, since I just learned about this kind of thing...

This is what's called the ad-hoc fallacy. The fallacy is where one party introduces new information for which there is no evidence at all, except that it fits a conclusion that party has already accepted.

For example:

Your neighbour Ted is your best friend, and an honest man. Ted would never steal from you. Yet you come home and find your house is burgled! You find muddy footprints that match Ted's unique shoe-print in your house, and you confide in your wife. "Maybe Ted stole from us..."

"Or maybe," says your wife, "someone stole Ted's shoes."

You peek out the window. Ted's shoes are by the door.

"Maybe," says your wife, "the thief put them back when they were done."

"Why would they do that?"

"Maybe they wanted to frame Ted."

"Why would they want to do *that*? Everyone loves Ted."

"Maybe Ted owes the mafia a gambling debt from college."

Etc etc. The problem is there's an infinite amount of bullshit in the world and only a finite amount of truth.

I'm not a writer, I'm a typoist.

All of this assumes:

- NASA has enough money to pay someone to watch the feed, their hand hovering over a giant "SHUT IT ALL DOWN" button. They don't.
- NASA knows they might have something to hide, so DOESN'T delay the live stream by one minute in case "Hey, aliens wandered into the frame, let's just static out those seconds and go oops, technical difficulties".
- The aliens are smart enough to travel between worlds but aren't smart enough to hide from a camera that NASA could have told them, in advance, that they were pointing in this one place (space is VERY big).
- None of the other observation devices pointed randomly at the sky (including people observing the ISS through their amateur telescopes and stuff, as people are want to do) saw this.
- The EU, Russians, Chinese and Indians with all their hardware and observation technology (none of whom save possibly the EU have any incentive to cooperate with the US and would, in fact, leap at the chance to discredit and shame them) didn't see it either.

The worst part is the Schroeder's competence that has to take place here. NASA have to be crazy-dedicated and funded in order to successfully cover up something as obvious as alien spacecraft whizzing around within visual range of the ISS, but also dumb enough to let it get exposed so trivially and easily as a public camera with the world watching.

When you start to think about it even a little bit the likelihood that it's real, live, true alien visitors and not just some kind of weird light reflection, space debris, or whatever is vanishingly small.

(...which is exactly what they WOULD say, isn't it...)

It's an unfortunate byproduct of our electoral system that most government departments have trouble seeing beyond the 4 year election cycle, because a whole new group of people could be in power by then and completely reverse the direction they've been taking for this time.

This problem is amplified in the United States, it seems. Countries like Canada, Australia, most of the EU don't have this problem; the political parties are often quite similar in terms of their policies, differing usually only in name and a few minor things.

It's hard to think of a solution that might help the US situation, apart from an agreement between the two major parties that, for major undertakings like the mission to Mars, if the other assumes power then it will continue.

Of course, every politician and their dog will want conditions on that; riders, perks, kick-backs, etc. It's hard to see how it could actually work in practice.

I agree. Just because the NSA does it doesn't make Russia doing it right, and just because the NSA does it doesn't make Russia doing it wrong.

Russia interfering with the Internet is wrong because it's wrong.

The NSA interfering with the Internet is wrong because it's wrong.

I am also Australian. I have no love for Putin, but I also have no love for blatant propaganda dressed up as news.

But this reads purely as propaganda.

"Putin is Lawful Evil, guys. He wants to control the Internet! He wants to rule over it, and over YOU, and you should hate and fear and oppose whatever he does because that's what's good for America!"

It may be largely true, maybe, that Putin believes that Russia should have domain over the Internet as it exists within Russia's borders, and there's certainly some precedent for that. Even sense. Nation-states exist to further their own interests, and the interests of their citizens.

The USA installs leaders in third world nations all over the globe based on the single, sole criteria of how loyal they are to the USA.

Russia does the exact same thing.

Great Briton did the exact same thing in the past.

The People's Republic of China will do the exact same thing in the future.

It's not news at all that governments seek to control the affairs of their citizens domestically and as much as they can internationally. This is the world of global politics. It's not different simply because it deals with the Internet; that's not to say it's necessarily good, or moral, or even wise, but that's how the game is played.

I'm getting pretty sick of this too. What happened, Slashdot? We used to be all about the tech, right or wrong. Now it's just "M$ suxx and are evil!!!" in every thread that Microsoft's mentioned.

It's annoying, and even self-defeating for Microsoft haters; it makes it a lot harder to take their serious points, well, seriously. If they're always going to be critical of Microsoft no matter what, and are willing to go total ad hominem when nothing else works, how can an uneducated observer take anything they say seriously?

You're right, to an extent, which is why I pointed it out. There IS justification for increasing taxes at a time when the economy is strong, for all the reasons you outlined.

The issue is that the GST (+10% tax on all goods and services, as its name might imply) isn't the fairest way to tax a population. As I mentioned, it's a stealth tax on low income earners, assuming that the other (higher) taxes are removed and the GST put in their place.

Now, I don't think for a moment that'll happen. That promise was made decades ago. Might as well have been made by cavemen with stones, in the political landscape.

But it's worth pointing out.